Monday, January 22, 2018

"This is a brief run-down of the main features of the PANOPTIGON, a prototype MIDI-controlled Optigan/Orchestron disc player (suitable for stage or studio) built by Robert Becker. Those attending Winter NAMM 2018 can see and play this unit for themselves at Quilter Labs - Booth 15120. Note that this unit is a PROTOTYPE / Proof-of-Concept unit, and does not necessarily reflect the design and/or feature set of any future production model. At this time, we cannot provide any estimates on pricing or availability- the unit is still in the R&D phase.

The Panoptigon will play vintage Optigan/Orchestron discs from the 1970s as well as the new line of discs made by optigan.com since 2008. Our new line of discs provide additional functionality, as they have strobe lines printed on them which allow for automatic tuning, transpose, pitch bend, and even mechanical vibrato. Vintage discs were never printed with such strobe lines, and thus are not compatible with these extended features, but will otherwise play nicely and sound better than ever. All the lo-fi you love, presented in the hi-fi you need!

The unit comes with an onboard DSP effects processor, which provides reverb as well as other basic effects such as flange.

Control is via MIDI- in this case, a basic MIDI controller keyboard.

The audio heard in this demo is direct from the unit, with no additional post-processing applied. The slight distortion you hear when the reverb is turned on is an artifact of Youtube's horrible audio compression.